I’ve subscribed to JSTOR Daily now for a number of years, but that is just the public face of JSTOR itself, which is described as a “non-profit library for the intellectually curious.”

It is similar to DPLA in that it partners with many other repositories to provide digital access to many types of collections, ranging from professional journals to artworks.

I have to say upfront that unless your ancestor or family was famous or mentioned personally in a famous historical event, it’s not likely that you will find your family in JSTOR.

However, it is likely that JSTOR has some articles, art works or other items in the collection that will add to our knowledge of our ancestors’ daily lives and events that affected them.

Explaining how to access JSTOR is a bit complicated. The easy explanation is that many colleges and universities have subscriptions and, if you live near one, you can head to the college library and search away. Some public libraries also have JSTOR subscriptions.

Having said that, there are a number of collections on JSTOR which are open to the public and accessible from home. I browsed several of them. One such collection is the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture housed at the New York Public Library. If you are a descendant of the Rev. Noah Davis, you’ve found the mother lode because there is a narrative about the reverend’s life, written by himself when he was 54 years old.

To browse and search Open Collections:

A subscription allows access to all of the JSTOR library:

The collections available through subscription offer a tremendous amount of variety. Here are just the first two rows from over 2000 collections:

Some of the other collections include:

• Adriana and Peter Termaat Collection (family history)
• Allentown Band Photograph Collection
• Barter Theatre Archives
• Boone and Crockett Club Records
• Carillon Yearbooks
• Carson Collection of Oral History

I’ve only shared a handful of titles, but you can see that the subject matter is all over the place and the collections are international.

If you see something here that looks interesting, don’t fret about access. It isn’t just the big universities that have subscriptions. If your local public library doesn’t subscribe – ask and perhaps they will sign up. Also, a small local community college library might have a subscription.

Finally, if you live in a rural area from those possibilities, there is a subscription for individuals called JPASS. $20 for a one month subscription that allows 10 PDF downloads might suffice for an individual user. Of course, unlimited searches can be completed.

At the very least, I recommend signing up for JSTOR Daily, which is free and has no strings attached.

Try it, you’ll like it!